The planned Symposium on High Pressure Biology will be a satellite of the XXX International Congress of the International Union of Physiological Sciences with cosponsorship by the International Union of Microbiological Sciences. The Symposium will be held in Toronto, Canada, from 8th to 10th July 1986 just before the main Congress in Vancouver. The three-day program is arranged to reflect three major perspectives in barobiology. The first day is oriented to marine ecology and high-pressure cell biology, with a microbiological flavor but with presentations on deep-sea animals. The second day is directed more to physiological sciences with consideration of the effects of pressure on the nervous system and on biomembranes. The third day has an orientation to molecular biology with presentations on biopolymers under pressure, enzyme activity under pressure and biophysical aspects of molecular responses to pressure. Each of the days will have oral presentations by leading scientists in barobiology mainly from North America and Western Europe plus poster presentations. The proceedings will be published. A long-term objective of the meeting is coordination of scientific effort from the different countries represented and from the subdisciplines represented by the themes of the three days of the meeting. New information in marine ecology, in hyperbaric physiology and in molecular barobiology needs to be reviewed and discussed to advance our overall understanding of pressure as one of the cardinal physical factors affecting all life on earth.